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Pakistan’s most well-known strategic weapon is denial. For many years, the neighbouring country has been planting this strategy in the minds of its surrogates in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). The most recent tactic has been to either execute an act or set it up, in order to trigger violence, by taking the situation to its tipping point.
This is accompanied by painting a bad picture of the actions taken by security forces against the supposedly innocent perpetrators of acts such as stone throwing, lynching and also vandalising service vehicles.
The purpose is clear. Put the burden of proof on the security forces since the democratic values of India allow sufficient freedom to differently aligned interest groups to politicise the issue. Let the locals be the martyrs and the security forces (mainly the Army) be the villains, and put immense pressure on the soldiers to defend themselves against an FIR, notwithstanding the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1990) or AFSPA (1990), which many in Kashmir assume is a legislation to allow the Army to act unchecked.
A convoy of 10 vehicles, commanded by a young Army Major and guarded by a small protection party, was being driven from Srinagar to Balapur, near Shopian town. A week prior to this, a militant had been killed in a village near Balapur. When the convoy entered the village, a stone-pelting mob of about 250-500 young men attacked it. The Major kept his cool and managed to get six vehicles out of the village. However, four straggler vehicles under a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) took a wrong turn and got stuck in the village.
Coming in the line of fire, two young men lost their lives, while a few others escaped with injuries. Seven Army men were injured in the process too.
An FIR was lodged against the Army unit and a magisterial inquiry was ordered. Consequently, the J&K Assembly witnessed pandemonium with the Opposition demanding arrest of the 'killers' while the perturbed Chief Minister, telephoned the Raksha Mantri to express her anguish against the Army's inability to hold its fire.
The targeting of uniformed people to cause greater instigation in the hope of an out of proportion retaliation, is a ploy that is being increasingly played out in the ‘new Kashmir narrative’ by separatists and Pakistan's Deep State. Ayub Pandit’s (of the J&K Police) lynching outside the Jamia mosque in Srinagar is still fresh in our collective memory.
The response of the Army and police forces so far has been professional, and even the incident near Balapur falls within the realm of ‘controlled response’, otherwise a score of young people may have suffered fatally.
In a television debate, a well-meaning political personality inquired of me as to why soldiers cannot fire at such mobs, targeting them below the knees. But experience tells me that soldiers invariably attempt to reason with mobs.
In the past, mobs were often dispersed by the sheer power of the personas and persuasiveness of officers. However, this sort of diplomatic negotiation seems to be a thing of the past, and lynching appears to be the intended trigger to attract a stronger response.
In internal security situations, the Army teaches soldiers to identify a mob leader/instigator and fire a single round below the knees. However, some of these are not standard internal security situations. The mobs are increasingly leaderless, frantic and driven to frenzy, by well camouflaged instigators.
Political parties must rise above narrow interests to prevent actions by soldiers being repeatedly questioned. In the current scenario, in which FIRs against stone pelters (both first time and second time offenders) are being withdrawn, while the Army continues to have fresh FIRs lodged against its personnel, there is enough reason to be irked. The narrative thus, sounds awkward and unappealing.
Lastly, those favouring no inquiry against the Army may recall that the AFSPA does not actually offer immunity to soldiers with the exception of the authority to sanction a prosecution being solely with the Central Government (making it thus, very difficult to sanction such a prosecution).
Whatever actions are taken by different stakeholders, the most important needs to be the sensitisation of all towards the negative narratives being mooted by Pakistan and the separatists.
(The writer is a retired Lieutenant General in the Indian Army. He is now associated with the Vivekanand International Foundation and Delhi Policy Group. He can be reached at @atahasnain53. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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Published: 30 Jan 2018,08:01 PM IST